The Stinging Fly Podcast

On this month's episode of the podcast, editor Danny Denton is joined by writer John Patrick McHugh, to read and discuss Sean O'Reilly's story 'All Day And All of the Night', which first appeared in our Winter 2011 issue. John Patrick McHugh is from Galway. His fiction has appeared in Winter Papers, The Tangerine, Banshee, Granta and The Stinging Fly. Pure Gold, his debut collection of short stories, was published by New Island in February of this year, and by Fourth Estate in June. He is currently guest editing an issue of Banshee. Sean O'Reilly was born in Derry in 1969. He has published two collections of short stories, Curfew and Other Stories (2000) and Levitation (2017), and three novels: Love and Sleep (2002), The Swing of Things (2004) and Watermark (2005). The Stinging Fly Podcast invites Irish writers to choose a story from the Stinging Fly archive to read and discuss. Previous episodes of the podcast can be found here. The podcast’s theme music is ‘Sale of Lakes’, by Divan. All of the Stinging Fly archive is available for everyone to read during the coronavirus crisis.

On this month's episode of the podcast, editor Danny Denton is joined by novelist Niamh Campbell, to read and discuss Kevin Power's darkly surreal story 'The Dead Hotel', which first appeared in the Summer 2006 issue of the magazine. Niamh Campbell's debut novel This Happy was published by Weidenfeld and Nicolson in 2020, and nominated for the An Post Irish Book Awards, the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year Award, and the John McGahern Book Prize. In 2020 she also won the Sunday Times Audible Short Story Award for her story 'Love Many'. Her short work can be found in The Dublin Review, 3:AM, Banshee, Tangerine, Five Dials, Granta, and gorse. She has been funded by the Arts Council of Ireland and is 2021 Writer in Residence at University College Dublin. Her second novel We Were Young is forthcoming with Weidenfeld and Nicolson in 2022. She lives and works in Dublin. Kevin Power's first novel, Bad Day in Blackrock, was published by Lilliput Press in 2008 and filmed as What Richard Did, directed by Lenny Abrahamson, in 2012. His second novel, White City, was published earlier this year by Scribner. He won the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature in 2009 and the Hennessy XO Award for Emerging Fiction, also in 2009. Kevin is currently Assistant Professor of Literary Practice in the School of English, Trinity College Dublin, and he holds a PhD in American Literature from University College Dublin. His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The Guardian, Irish Times, The Dublin Review, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. The Stinging Fly Podcast invites Irish writers to choose a story from the Stinging Fly archive to read and discuss. Previous episodes of the podcast can be found here. The podcast’s theme music is ‘Sale of Lakes’, by Divan. All of the Stinging Fly archive is available for everyone to read during the coronavirus crisis.

On this month's episode of The Stinging Fly Podcast, Declan Meade is joined by Nuala O'Connor, to read 'Sing, Dance, Earn Your Keep', an essay by Nicole Flattery first published in the Winter 2015 issue of the magazine. Nuala O'Connor is a writer of novels, short fiction, poetry, and essays. She also publishes under the name Nuala Ní Chonchúir. Nuala's fifth novel NORA, about Nora Barnacle, wife and muse to James Joyce, was published earlier this year by New Island, and her chapbook of historical flash fiction, Birdie, was recently published by Arlen House. She is the editor at flash e-zine Splonk and she lives in Galway. Nicole Flattery's work has been published in the Stinging Fly, the White Review, the Dublin Review, BBC Radio 4, the Irish Times, Winter Papers and the 2019 Faber anthology of new Irish writing. Her first collection of stories, Show Them A Good Time, was published by The Stinging Fly Press and Bloomsbury. Her story 'Track' won the 2017 White Review Short Story Prize, and 'Parrot' won the Story of the Year at the Irish Book Awards in 2019. The Stinging Fly Podcast invites Irish writers to choose a story from the Stinging Fly archive to read and discuss. Previous episodes of the podcast can be found here. The podcast’s theme music is ‘Sale of Lakes’, by Divan. All of the Stinging Fly archive is available for everyone to read during the coronavirus crisis.

On this month's episode of The Stinging Fly Podcast, Ian Maleney is joined by Adrian Duncan, to read a piece from the Summer 2008 issue of the Stinging Fly, an essay from the 'First Passions' series written by the Longford poet Vona Groarke. Adrian is the Berlin-based author of two novels, Love Notes from A German Building Site, which won the John McGahern Book Prize in 2019, and A Sabbatical in Leipzig. His first collection of short stories, Midfield Dynamo, was published earlier this year by Lilliput Press. Aside from writing, Adrian has also worked as a structural engineer, visual artist, and film-maker. He is the co-editor of Paper Visual Arts, a contemporary art publication based between Berlin and Dublin.  Vona Groarke has published six collections of poetry with the Gallery Press, as well as the book-length essay, Four Sides Full. A former editor of the Poetry Ireland Review, Vona's writing has won the Michael Hartnett Award, and been shortlisted for the Forward Prize. She currently teaches at the Centre for New Writing at the University of Manchester, and is a member of Aosdána. The Stinging Fly Podcast invites Irish writers to choose a story from the Stinging Fly archive to read and discuss. Previous episodes of the podcast can be found here. The podcast’s theme music is ‘Sale of Lakes’, by Divan. All of the Stinging Fly archive is available for everyone to read during the coronavirus crisis.

This month on the Stinging Fly podcast, we're taking a little diversion from our usual format to present a special reading of a story from our Summer 2020 issue. 'Getting the Electric' was written by Louise Hegarty, and is read here by musician Maija Sofia.  This recording was made as part of View Source, a unique online publication, curated by Fallow Media and commissioned by Solas Nua, celebrating contemporary Irish literature at its most adventurous. Working alongside six cutting-edge literary publications in Ireland today – The Stinging Fly, The Dublin Review, Gorse, Banshee, Winter Papers, and Fallow Media – View Source invited writers and artists to reimagine stories, poems, and essays first made available in print. You can experience all the writing and sounds, and find out more about the project, at https://viewsource.solasnua.org/. Louise Hegarty has had work published in Banshee, The Tangerine, and The Dublin Review. Recently, she had a short story featured on BBC Radio 4’s Short Works. She lives in Cork. Maija Sofia Makela is a musician, songwriter and artist who works between the overlapping worlds of sound, performance and text. Across various forms, her work explores language, shadowed histories, hauntings, diasporic identity, feminism, mysticism and folklore. She is from rural Galway and is of mixed Irish, Finnish and Turkish-Cypriot heritage. She is a recipient of the Arts Council of Ireland’s Next Generation Award for music (2020), her debut album, Bath Time, was shortlisted for the Choice Award album of year and she was artist-in-residence at Sirius Arts Centre for the duration of winter 2020-21.

In this month's episode of the podcast, Danny Denton is joined by novelist Conor O'Callaghan to read and discuss the essay 'Suddenly A Duck', by Claire-Louise Bennett. Conor O'Callaghan was born in Newry in 1968 and grew up in Dundalk. His first novel, Nothing on Earth, was published in 2016 and was shortlisted for the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year. His second novel, We Are Not in the World, is due to be published in February 2021. He has also published five collections of poetry, and a memoir: Red Mist: Roy Keane and the Football Civil War, an account of Roy Keane's departure from the 2002 FIFA World Cup squad. He currently lectures at Sheffield Hallam University in the UK. Claire-Louise Bennett's short fiction and essays have been published in several publications including The Moth and The Irish Times. She received the inaugural White Review Short Story Prize in 2013. Her first book, Pond, was published in 2016 by The Stinging Fly Press. A novel, Checkout 19, will be published by Jonathan Cape next year. The Stinging Fly Podcast invites Irish writers to choose a story from the Stinging Fly archive to read and discuss. Previous episodes of the podcast can be found here. The podcast’s theme music is ‘Sale of Lakes’, by Divan. All of the Stinging Fly archive is available for everyone to read during the coronavirus crisis.

This month on the Stinging Fly podcast, we're taking a little diversion from our usual format to present a lecture by the novelist Paul Lynch. Paul is the author of four internationally acclaimed novels: Beyond the Sea, The Black Snow, Red Sky In Morning, and Grace, which won the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year Award in 2018. He was born in Limerick, raised in Donegal, and currently lives in Dublin with his wife and two children.  This lecture, entitled 'The Dream That Wakes You Up', was commissioned by Words Ireland and delivered – via Zoom – to the Bray Literary Festival in September 2020. You can read this lecture, as well as previous years' lectures by Mia Gallagher and Seán O'Reilly, in full on our website: stingingfly.org. 

In this month's episode of the podcast, Declan Meade is joined by novelist Rónán Hession to read and discuss the story 'Eight Days', by Chinese writer Zou Jingzhi.  Rónán Hession is an award-winning musician and writer. He wrote and recorded music as Mumblin’ Deaf Ro and was nominated for a Choice Music Award for his album, Dictionary Crimes. Leonard And Hungry Paul, Rónán's first book, was published by Bluemoose Books in March 2019 and earned him  nominations for both Best Newcomer at the Irish Book Awards 2019 and the Dalkey Emerging Writer Award 2020. Zou Jingzhi is an acclaimed Chinese author who has written extensively for the stage and screen, as well as fiction and poetry. He is a founding member of theatre collective Longmashe, and his opera The Night Banquet was performed in English translation at Lincoln Centre in New York in 2002. 'Eight Days' was published in our special translation issue in Summer 2013. 'Eight Days' was translated from the Chinese by Jeremy Tiang, who has translated novels by Yan Ge, Chan Ho-Kei, Li Er, Zhang Yueran, Yeng Pway Ngon and Lo Yi-Chin, among others. He also writes and translates plays. His novel State of Emergency won the Singapore Literature Prize in 2018. He lives in New York City. The Stinging Fly Podcast invites Irish writers to choose a story from the Stinging Fly archive to read and discuss. Previous episodes of the podcast can be found here. The podcast’s theme music is ‘Sale of Lakes’, by Divan. All of the Stinging Fly archive is available for everyone to read during the coronavirus crisis.

Caelainn Hogan is the author of Republic of Shame: Stories from Ireland's Institutions for Fallen Women, published in 2019 by Penguin. She has worked as a journalist and filed stories from all over the world for publications like National Geographic, the New York Times magazine, Harper's, the New Yorker, and The Guardian. She's also written essays and reported pieces for The Dublin Review and The Stinging Fly.  For this episode of the podcast, Caelainn has chosen to read 'On Non-Fiction about Housing and Homelessness', by Lois Kapila, co-founder and managing editor of The Dublin Inquirer, a reader-funded city newspaper for Dublin. Lois was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize for Journalism in 2019. This piece was published online in June 2017 as a prelude to our Winter 2017 issue, which featured a special section on housing issues. Caelainn's piece 'No Shelter', also discussed in this episode, can be found in that issue too. The Stinging Fly Podcast invites Irish writers to choose a story from the Stinging Fly archive to read and discuss. Previous episodes of the podcast can be found here. The podcast’s theme music is ‘Sale of Lakes’, by Divan. All of the Stinging Fly archive is available for everyone to read during the coronavirus crisis.

Mark O'Connell, author of To Be A Machine and Notes from an Apocalypse, joins Ian Maleney to read and discuss 'Bland God: Notes on Mark Zuckerberg', an essay from our Summer 2018 issue written by Roisin Kiberd. Mark O'Connell is a writer based in Dublin. His books, To Be a Machine: Encounters With a Post-Human Future, and Notes From An Apocalypse, are published by Granta in the UK, and Doubleday in the US. He is a regular contributor to The New Yorker’s “Page-Turner” blog; his work has been published in The New York Times Magazine, The New York Times Book Review, The Observer, and The Independent.  He has a PhD in English Literature from Trinity College Dublin, and in 2013 his academic monograph on the work of the novelist John Banville, John Banville’s Narcissistic Fictions, was published by Palgrave Macmillan. He was an Irish Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow from 2011 to 2012 at Trinity College, where he taught contemporary literature. He won the 2018 Wellcome Book Prize for To Be A Machine, and the 2019 Rooney Prize for Irish Literature. Roisin Kiberd is a writer and journalist from Dublin who has written several pieces for the Stinging Fly, and her writing about modern technology has been published in The Guardian, The Dublin Review, and Vice's Motherboard, where she wrote a column about internet subcultures. The Stinging Fly Podcast invites Irish writers to choose a story from the Stinging Fly archive to read and discuss. Previous episodes of the podcast can be found here. The podcast’s theme music is ‘Sale of Lakes’, by Divan. All of the Stinging Fly archive is available for everyone to read during the coronavirus crisis.